


to raise a ghost from smoke and liquor and ice

by backtoblack (jarofactonbell)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, M/M, captain america: first avenger - Freeform, toxic ways to deal with grief: don't drink your grief away kids, unstable steve rogers as he torpedoes his way into the icy ocean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 15:17:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15560619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jarofactonbell/pseuds/backtoblack
Summary: dirges for james buchanan barnes





	to raise a ghost from smoke and liquor and ice

**Author's Note:**

> So I have feelings and here they are going here, here and there and it's all a mess

 

they hold a funeral for Bucky ( _James Buchanan Barnes_ _ **32557038)**_

a marked grave (but is it really marked?) - they have, between them, no shovels, no spades, no headstones, no masonry 

wooden cross from a shivering branch drizzled with European snow - unsympathetic - Mother Nature spares just enough tears for each fallen one above ground, for they come back to her in death - and the living ones are to weep for one who returns back to her

they are somewhere in europe - everything all the same, one landscape of mud and snow

teeth and skin no longer of flesh and blood - there is only ice and snow in and out of skin

they bury him, no bones, only cigarettes and a lighter under a mound of soil, coffee beans dusted over soil frozen and clawed open

Captain America ( _Ste_ _ven Grant Rogers - he's a boy, barely even a man_  | _don't call me captain, i **failed** him)_

digs a hole in the ground and lets memorabilia fall in, trickle like finer sand back on their home ground, fingernails crusted with blood and dirt

there are no dirges

for nobody could cry any more than they could and there is no air to give word to

for words can't bring the dead back

and so the grave stands 

(and Captain America leaves Steve Rogers behind in that crude grave, on that train, in the dog tag that winds around Bucky's neck as the plunge takes him down  _down further_ and there is no 'I' in the burial)

i stand apart from that - i don't know who that captain is

i stand apart from it all - and i write you whose bones we do not have

you who takes my name by your heart

you who deserve all the songs in your name

 

there is an avalanche (and here i am, plunging)

my dear, i keep you alive in the breath i take

constructing a person from a ghost tonight

keeping a ghost alive from unresting

drinking to blur the line between seeing and hallucinating

\- relying on alcohol to dull the simpering pain behind eyelids - that there is a ghost I'm giving breath to, whiskey tinted and hues of pilfered bourbon

you flicker and waver and the stuff burns a trail of subdued fire down down down

yet your shadow always seems to step away from under mine 

unburied bones are the ones most painful -

they ( _we_ ) buried you into ground without your bones in there

i graze the dirt, your dog tags under my shirt, close to my heart

you took my name down _down down_ into the pit of brewing snow and all they buried you with are campfire tales and fading songs of a rake from brooklyn and a friend under the shadow of Captain America 

there are no bones to lie down to earth

only whispers of shadows and broken promises of ‘we looked but nothing found’

Missing In Action - emblazoned on the front of the reports

cruel letters hanging me in suspended hope and despair -

until i see that your breath had departed you and your bones atrophy in my arms

my heart will always hang onto the hope that your breath lingers 

i searched for you, backtracked across snowy terrains, wept against the unanswering mountains and pouring snow, begging them to bring you back, to preserve you

what's left of you

so i can bring you home and lay your bones to rest

\- it is the obscurity of all of you that i believe, so wholeheartedly _(so foolishly)_ that your bones are still rattling in a ravine and that your skin is now snow and your veins winter bitterness and i had failed you and your family had lost a son a brother a protector _i'm so sorry_

how odd is it that i, Steven Grant Rogers ( _Captain America)_  100 pounds soaking wet and cracked knuckles hammering away ideals at nameless thugs behind brooklyn alleys, evaded death in a maddening twirl, while you who  _ought to draw air for longer,_ was robbed of the life i was never meant to have?

bucky

bucky

_buck_

you fear that nobody will live to sing the songs in my name

but i live ( _am i really living with half a soul and life no longer in my veins?)_ with the knowledge that no one will live to sing songs in your name because you are now just barely a name among many

you are simply a lighter, cigarettes, coffee grounds, a dog tag not of your name but mine

the world may not know your name

but i know

we exchanged dog tags, cigarettes, dampened lungs, stolen breaths and fractured bones under broken stars and i held your name close to my chest, wishing for eternity and a life beyond the mud all around me 

you are my world

sometimes that is enough 

you are my shadow my name my soul my spirit everything that i am and everything that you are is irrevocably mine

i don't quite exactly know when our shadows merge, but under that fading street lamp of ‘39 where you have perfume on your collar and i have spilt wine in my hair and our footsteps still staggering with the ignorance of youth

that i saw my shadow and yours merge

that i swear myself to you

loving Peggy is an easy thing - there's a wildfire in her, like yours, jerk, that embroils me into your glow - i love her just as I will always love you

to Peggy, i am sorry 

when they search for me there would be no traces of you, Buck - only Peggy Peggy _Peggy_ -

there is no mistake that she is my mind's most recent trauma and mistake - and i will never stop loving her

where are you then? 

oh Bucky, James Buchanan Barnes, you are the pain i carry in my veins, your breath in my chest, your everything entangled in mine that when i try to pick us apart, i cannot find where you end and where I begin -

so i think it's okay for an old pain to not uncurl in the place of a new one because you are an ache I will carry to my grave 

i crash a plane onto the ocean in search of your eyes in the frozen waters down below (a ghost of regret and _so so_ much guilt - i'm sorry i couldn't catch your hand - i'm sorry i let you go)

Peggy can hear it now, hear the spearheaded focus of mine 

that wants to fling all of me into the frozen depths 

in your eyes I left my soul/ in your eyes I will find yours

i'm sorry Peggy, i'm _so_ sorry

i might have to miss this stop, keep this one dance from you

i kept someone waiting - he's been waiting for a while, the bit of my soul that even your fingers couldn't recreate and renew 

eyes that are sky and ice

Peggy - my best girl

the kiss we shared was long passed goodbye

the end of the line is here and i'm at my stop

James Buchanan Barnes, you are my first and last love, the most enduring

i have followed you from the streets of brooklyn to the front lines of europe and on that dreaded train that has us on a rope and we are so close to fraying threads that unravel and spin

in this framework of dying glory - you may know the name, pal, i was never interested in planes

i will come to you now  _(what irony, huh, pal?)_

and they will find our bones in ice

**Author's Note:**

> CRY WITH ME  
> alternatively please find me and cry with me [here](https://twitter.com/jarofactonbell),[here](https://curiouscat.me/jenny_benny) and support me [here](https://ko-fi.com/jarofactonbell)  
> 


End file.
